Natural Resources Inventory of the Rajampet Parliamentary Constituency, Andhra Pradesh, India using Geospatial Techniques

Geospatial technology, with its profound capability to capture, analyse, and interpret vast expanses of land from a distance, has revolutionized our perception of Earth's landscapes. In the present work, an attempt is made to study the Rajampet parliamentary/Lok Sabha constituency in Andhra Pradesh, India, from a geospatial technology viewpoint. The constituency comprises parts of the YSR Kadapa, Chittoor, and Annamayya Districts. The area of the constituency is 11,153 sq. km. The study area is well-connected by various modes of transportation, such as road and rail. The slope distribution clearly shows that the topography has rugged hilly terrain, and the slope varies from nearly level to very steep slopes. Shallow gravelly red soils followed by loamy to clayey skeletal deep reddish-brown soils are the predominant soil types. The study area has been classified into level-III land use/land cover classes. The predominant category is agricultural land, followed by forest. Mango is the major horticulture crop cultivated, followed by banana, acid lime, papaya, and sweet orange. The study area is underlain by rocks of Archean age. These rocks are traversed by dolerite dykes and quartz veins of Lower Proterozoic age. These Archean rocks are superimposed by rocks of Lower Proterozoic to Archean age in the western part as minor veins and are overlain by rocks of the Papagni and Nallamalai groups of the Cuddapah Super Group of Middle Proterozoic age in the eastern part. Groundwater occurs in almost all geological formations, and its potential depends upon the nature of geological formations, geographical setup, incidence of rainfall, recharge, and other hydrogeological characters of the aquifer. Geospatial technology enables the collection of information, and this data collection is extremely valuable to gather location information and provides us with data that can give a deeper understanding of many issues.